Competitive Advantage: Use Competitive Advantage to Your Advantage - Part 4

When keeping tabs on your competition, it is critical that you understand their sales and trade show marketing strategy. Here are 12 questions to help you do this.

Sales/Marketing-based questions:

1. What marketing and sales strategies are they using in their trade show booth?
2. How is their sales force organized - by product line, geographic market or end-user?
3. Who are their largest and most important customers?
4. What group of customers does our competition sell to that we don't, and why have they been successful in this market?
5. Which group is least satisfied and why?
6. Why are customers switching to competitors' products/services?
7. What new distribution channels have they developed?
8. What medium, other than tradeshows, do they use to market their products/services?
9. Which products/services are they pushing?
10. Which features are they emphasizing?
11. What are their pricing strategies - commercial, nonprofit, government and foreign sales?
12. What special pricing policies do they offer - credit, discounts, incentives, consignments?